Tesla K20 and K20x PCIe gen 2??

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
#1

Hello,

I was in the process of ordering a blade that could effectively utilize the K20 or K20X when I realized that the new Tesla GPUs run with only PCIe Gen 2 according to: http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/kepler/Tesla-K20-Passive-BD-06455-001-v05.pdf

Cutting the pcie bandwidth in half can be costly for some applications we are working with, so it is important to have the highest possible interconnect to the GPU.

Is there any information regarding future cards coming out based on either the gk110 architecture or a future architecture that will be supporting PCIe gen3, and can we get any estimated time frame for such a release?

#2

Wow, that’s pretty surprising. I wonder why that decision was made…

#3

We couldn’t get K20 to work in Gen3 with Sandy Bridge. You may know that most devices are having trouble working in Gen3 with SandyBridge

#4

Is Gen3 something that could be re-enabled with a driver update to support Ivy Bridge systems?

#5

Related question, does anyone know if X79 SB-E motherboards with PLX PCIe 3.0 switches are able to avoid these Gen3 issues?

I think there is only one mobo in this category – the ASRock Extreme 11.

#6

Interesting, I guess the K20X might be able to utilize PCIe 3.0 if we’re lucky.

I’ve noticed that some laptop installs with Gk107+Ivy bridge seem to run fine.

#7

I will echo seibert’s question – is PCIe 3.0 currently only disabled at the driver level? Being stuck with Gen2 for a whole product cycle would be unfortunate.